Bridging the Gap between Cognition and Developmental Neuroscience: The Example of Number Representation

Abstract

Developmental cognitive neuroscience necessarily begins with a characterization of the developing mind. One cannot discover the neural underpinnings of cognition without detailed understanding of the representational capacities that underlie thought. Characterizing the developing mind involves specifying the evolutionarily given building blocks from which human conceptual abilities are constructed, describing what develops, and discovering the computational mechanisms that underlie the process of change. Here, I present the current state of the art with respect to one example of conceptual understanding: the representation of number. Lessons for developmental cognitive neuroscience are drawn at two levels of analysis: first, structural analogy between developmental processes described at the neural level and at the cognitive level, and second, challenges posed at the level of systems neuroscience.